Monday, May 16, 2011

For all of you interested in making money online, I've started a blog on some sites I'm trying out right now. I'll tell you if they are scams or not, how much you can expect to make, etc. Should be helpful if you are too damn lazy to get a job or just want some extra income for sitting on your ass doing nothing. Check it out http://makemoneyonline174.blogspot.com/

One of the best sites I've found for making money is at http://www.cashcrate.com/2741744 I've made 56.48 in three weeks or so, not doing much.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Every year, at CU Boulder, there is a big celebration/"protest" for 4/20. Officially it is a protest of weed still being illegal. In reality, it is a bunch of people getting high in public in front of cops. This year's celebration was no different. Since Boulder already has very progressive laws towards weed, CU makes sense as a place to get together to smoke. Many people from around the state, and even some people from out of the state all congregate from about 3:00 to 4:25 to play music, sit in circles, hoola-hoop, and, of course, smoke lots of weed.

Norlin Quad before...

The police maintain a presence, mostly to intimidate. Obviously, it's working well. ^.^ The fat one looking at the camera told me that his face is trademarked so, "this shit better not end up on Facebook"

Let the ... protest... begin

Everybody's gettin ready

Versace weed bag and shirt, check

Some never miss the opportunity to capitalize ^.^

2:30

3:30

Didn't you know? weed is good for you.

And the real party begins

Bananas made it

So did the Ghostbusters

4:00, people as far as the eye can see

4:20!!! Ever wonder what 10,000 people smoking at the same time looks like? Now you know. P.S. That cloud over the crowd isn't fog...

Annnd immediately afterwards, the police rush the field to get everyone to go home... you showed us, occifers

Really, everyone rushed across the street for munchies

This line was like 100 people long

Some of us don't know our limit...

All in all, it was a good day. I dunno how clear we made it that weed shouldn't be legal, but hey, at least we all got real high.

Monday, April 11, 2011

I think it's been like a week since I posted last, I've been busy because of the CWA. The conference on world affairs is a conference held in Boulder every year with guests from all over the world in all kinds of specialties. They sit on panels that are loosely related to their specialties, and bring a different perspective to many important issues in the country and world.

One of the most interesting talks I saw was by a girl, only 24 years old, named Gigi Ibrahim. She lives in Egypt, and was one of the original activists and protestors in the Egyptian revolution. She talked about how long before the revolution, she saw how bad things were in Egypt under Mubarak. Because the media is censored there, and there is no real independent media source, any protest or plan for protest would never be published. So, to be able to participate in the protests, you had to know someone who knew the details. If you didn't, it was likely that you'd never hear about it happening at all. Through a professor at her university, Gigi got in contact with a small group of revolutionaries who set up protests in Cairo. She attended every one for a year, using the internet to set up meeting places, times, plans, and trying to get more people to join. She said every time, they would start at the edges of the city and call for people to join them in protest. Every time the people would ignore them, and they would end up alone in the middle of Cairo, the same 100 or so people every time.
When this really started to change was when the man in Tunisia burnt himself to death after being mistreated by a police officer. From there, the protest in Tunisia started, and soon tehy had overthrown their oppressive dictator. This started to give the people of Egypt hope that they could do the same.
It wasn't long after this that Mubarak shut off Facebook and Twitter, then the whole internet, then cell phone companies. People couldn't communicate with each other, and protests couldn't be arranged anymore. But, Gigi and some others were able to get on Twitter using Tor and a bridge and organize their group to action.
The next time Gigi and her fellow revolutionaries protested, they started at the edge of the city like always, calling people to arms. For the first time in her life, people listened, and flooded into the streets in thousands. Everyone was finally tired of letting their government walk all over them and make them feel powerless.
When they got to the building where they were going to protest, the cops started shooting the group with rubber bullets and tear gas. There were enough people and they were angry enough that they rushed the police officers and established a place in the square. The power was finally back with the people. After some brutal fighting, Gigi getting shot with a rubber bullet in the back, buildings burning, and many people getting killed, Mubarak finally stepped down.
This victory would have been a complete fantasy for most Egyptians just a month before it was achieved. Gigi and her group of protestors knew that the power always lies with the people, and without that knowledge and hope that things can change, we are at the whim of violent dictators like Mubarak. People need to realize that this is their life, and their country. If we want the government to treat us better, it is up to us. Nobody is going to do it for us. Obama doesn't have our best interests in mind and neither does anyone else. We have to be the voice of the people because we are the people. Revolution is in our hands, we just have to believe.
These days, Gigi has over 9000 followers on her Twitter including president Obama. Egypt is working on rebuilding their country the way they want, and people finally have a voice again. They should be an inspiration to us all to take back the power, and tell the government how we want it to run.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Today, my friend was talking about how she is getting laser eye surgery soon, and how after the surgery she will see halos around light because her eyes will be so dilated. This made me think about how we view reality. It is funny that some things we see and think "this is reality", and some things we see, and without question think "this isn't real". A good example is the haloes that my friend will see. She will see the light coming from a lamp and think that it is real, but the haloes of color around the light are just an aspect of her dilated eyes and not real. But, this is a deceiving idea of reality, even though it is one that is commonly held. If we look at something blue, the light reflecting off of it hits our eyes, and our brains interpret those light waves as the color blue. But really, that something is emitting a ton of light waves that we can't see at all. So, if we could see the object in reality, it would look a lot different than the interpretation our mind makes for it. This is true of all color, because all color is is our mind attempting to interpret a short spectrum of light that bounces off of objects. If not constrained by our minds and eyes, reality would look a lot different than what we see.
So, to think that we are directly seeing reality is naive, because we are only seeing our mental interpretation of reality. We take our perception of our senses, and view it as reality, when really it is just our perception. It makes sense that we think we are seeing and interacting with reality, because it is all we can possibly know. If we can't trust our senses, we can't know anything about the world, and if we can't know anything about the world, we can't successfully interact with it. But, since the only 'view' of reality we get is through our sense perceptions, it seems like we need to have a way to verify that our perceptions are accurate in order to justifiably believe that we are seeing anything that even closely resembles reality. But the only way to test our senses is through other senses. I can go to a doctor and take a hearing test, but i only 'know' the doctor exists by seeing him, hearing him, maybe smelling or feeling him. Aka, I only 'know' the doctor exists because I am trusting my senses. So the doctor can't verify that my senses are working because i need verification of my senses in order to verify that the doctor is real.
Basically what this leads to is the realization that senses can't verify senses. Coupled with the fact that the only way we have to verify anything is through our senses, and we get the conclusion that our only means of verification of reality is unverifiable. Therefore, we aren't justified in believing our senses, because we can't verify them. And since our senses are our means of justifying every single other belief we had about reality, we aren't justified in believing anything at all about reality. So, when you see that light and the halo around it, you can say the halo isn't real, its just my eyes, but you should also say the light isn't necessarily real, and neither is the light post it's coming from, or the ground it is sitting on, or the body that this thought is coming from.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Seems like people are really mixed on dubstep. So many people are vehemently anti-dubstep, and I kinda wonder why. I think it is the future of music. There are two trends emerging in the music scene, and they are autotune and dubstep. both have been around for a long time, but both are just now getting really popular. I can see why one would hate auto tune, it takes the talent out of music. It can be a cool tool, but so many times it replaces real talent. Dubstep takes just as much talent as any other type of electronic music, and you're definitely living in the past if you think that electronic music is all untalented. Sure some of it is, but the same is true of any genre. I actually think that dubstep on average takes more talent because it cant just use one trance beat for 5 minutes, it has to be unique and mix it up. Plus, the beats are sick. Nothing beats the hard grime beats that penetrate through to your bones. I don't actually have much to write except a general wonder about why people hate dubstep when it's obviously awesome. Heh, here's some videos.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

A bit ago, I was talking with a friend, and brought up a flyer that I had seen circulating the interwebz "from" anonymous. It was called Operation Skankbag and I thought it sounded pretty cool. The basic story is an artist put an image of a starving African child carrying a handbag and a chihuahua on a shirt and started selling it to raise awareness about Darfur with a statement about the materialism of pop culture. Louis Vuitton thought the handbag looked a little too much like theirs and sued the artist. "Anon" posted a flyer saying lets take down Louis Vuitton's site.
So, I agree that taking down the site isn't gonna do anything really, and everyone's time would be better spend doing something about Darfur, donating to charity, etc. But this kind of vigilante-ism against a huge company who are being bitches to a woman who is only expressing herself is still cool because it gets across the message that big companies being asshats for no reason is only going to get them negative press.
Anyways, my friend said that he really didn't like the group anonymous, and I told him he misunderstood. Anon isn't a group, it's everyone, it is the internet. The media has started to portray it as some highly organized terrorist cell, but anyone with a brain knows it's more likely 15 yr old kids sitting in their mom's basements "hacking" because they have a lot of time on their hands. Either way, the idea of anon as a group misses the point that anon is anonymous and therefore can't be defined by group ideology.
My friend argued that once the media, or some mass of people defines something as a group, that something becomes a group. For instance, there are 15 yr old kids who identify with anonymous and say they are part of the group. They release flyers with the logo, and write "For we are anonymous. We do not forgive, we do not forget. Expect us." This implies that the people who wrote the flyer identify with a group named anonymous. So, since there are people who write under the banner of anonymous, and it has been defined as a group, and people identify as members, anonymous is a group. Maybe it wasn't, it wasn't meant to be, but it is now; even though it is loosely defined and unorganized.

So, for a person to agree with the ideology of the group anonymous, one must agree with all of the operations that the group takes part it. Everything released under the banner anonymous is, for better or worse, a project of the group, according to the new definition of anonymous as a group. So, when anonymous decides to ruin a girls life for being too cocky on youtube, even though she is only eleven, that is just as much anonymous as the group that decides to take down Louis Vuitton for being skankbags.
Therefore, I reevaluated the way I look at Anonymous. I don't like the idea of anonymous as a group because it is a lot of different people with different morals, ideologies and goals. Being part of a group implies a singular ideology, and this can't happen with the group anonymous, so they contradict each other all the time. I agree with some of the things the group decides to do, but I think that anonymous in its new formation as a defined group instead of an abstract entity containing no morality and no ideology, is not something I can stand behind. I'm all for anonymous people hacking or DDoSing people or companies that are being dicks, but I think that people should stop identifying with the group "anonymous", and start actually acting anonymously again. Everyone should act as an individual and participate in whatever they agree with, but acting as Anonymous is stupid, contradictory, not anonymous, and may be dangerous with all the press it is getting.

Monday, March 28, 2011

WTF is it with the internet and its picking up on really bad shit and making it really popular? It seems like every other week there is a new viral video on youtube of some horrible singer like Rebecca Black, then in a week or so, there are 400 new videos all parodying Rebecca Black. Now you can see the shittiest song ever recorded in the style of Bob Dylan, Death metal, emo, Sigur ros, etc. I don't think that anybody takes the time to realize that by giving her so much attention, you're not letting her fade away like she should. So, her video gets 40 million views, and a retarded record exec confuses this as actual talent, and signs her. Soon, she becomes the next Justin Beiber, and we have to deal with much more than just one shitty song. I am contemplating whether posting this blog just adds to the problem. It probably does, but fuck it. I think we should celebrate talent and skill, not stupidity. So here's this:

The XX are an amazing band, and recently Jamie XX has started remixing some of his bands and other bands songs, and they are all pretty sick. The XX is really good indie music, it knows how to use silence to convey emotion. The electronic remixes he is doing are genius in their ambiance.
So, now that I've hated on internet meme's I would like to point out that they aren't all bad. Sometimes the internet points out hilarious things that we should all see to make our days better. For example this youtube vid has been popular lately:

So epically funny. Anyways, memes can be great, or they can be a trolls dream, but before passing on a meme, realize that you are making that content more popular, and keeping it alive longer. I'm not saying Rebecca Black deserves to die, but her music does. So, instead of posting one of the billions of her vids, I'm gonna put up a remix by nosaj thing of radiohead. Beautiful

Saturday, March 26, 2011

There is a cancer entering modern music, and it's name is auto tune. I feel like every new hit that comes out has some singer who can't sing helped out by auto tune. Now people who have no talent, and could never have released a record are making top 40 hits. On the forefront of the new popular music scene is hip hop and rap, and even it has fallen to shitty autotuning. Every new rap song now has a verse rapped, then an autotuned chorus song by a guy who sounds like he never hit puberty. All I can say is fuck the modern music scene, i really hope that people get over this robotizing of their voices soon.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Just a quick post today, cause there's not much to say, but recently I've learned about this smart drug, or nootropic called piracetam. It's a cool idea, drugs that make you smarter instead of drugs that make you trip or feel energetic or anything like that. I looked into it, cause if it's possible, I'm definitely interested in all the help i can get. It seems like it's actually legit. There have been many studies done on the effects on people with alzheimers, ADD, other degenerative diseases or brain disorders, and it's always been pretty positive results. There has also been a couple studies done on the effects on healthy normal people, one saying that after two weeks, people's short term memory increases greatly. So, I found some for sale like a month ago on some body builder website (of all places) in a huge tub for like 16 dollars. Its 500 grams, and you do a gram a day (or I do), so it lasts like a year and a half. Not a bad price for sure. The only problem is it is in powder instead of pills, so it tastes like absolute shit. But if you can get over that, it's totally worth giving a try.
I've been taking it along with choline for about a month now, and have started to notice some effects when engaging in memory based activities. For example, I sat down to play the piano for the first time in like 6 months the other day, and started playing moonlight sonata from memory. I really didn't think I'd get very far, because it had been so long, but I got as far as I had ever bothered memorizing, without stopping or messing up once. I was surprised at myself as it was happening. Kinda cool.
I also am learning arabic, and like with any foreign language, there is a lot of memorization involved. But, looking at flashcards after a few weeks on this, and I can start to remember vocab much quicker than before. Anyways, I think it's a cool thing to use drugs for memory and intelligence instead of to just get fucked up. In some countries there are loads of similar drugs for sale in "smart shops." So, I'd recommend giving it a try.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Aaight, new post time, why the fuck not. Someone wrote a comment asking me to write on marijuana. Probably some dumb ass stoner who will never read this anyways, but why the fuck not. So, i know that most everyone under the age of 30 nowadays thinks that weed should be legal and I'm no different, but I don't think that's enough. I mean the drug war is a retarded flushing of money, and the entire point of it is to tell me how I can spend my time. I live in Boulder, CO, in the US and here weed has pretty much gained the status of being legal these days. It's legal for medical use, and there are hundreds of doctors willing to say you have chronic headaches or anxiety and they recommend pot. I have a friend who said she has bad cramps on her period, and the doctor recommended that she have the ability to own 60 plants at a time. That's like 20 pounds of weed. For her period.
But, despite weed becoming slowly accepted by society, most drugs are still looked down upon. I don't think that there's too much to gain from injecting heroin, but I also don't think I have the right to tell an intelligent adult that he isn't allowed to. We should have the freedom to do whatever the fuck we want with our bodies. There should be an age limit, but as long as someone is an adult, they have the responsibility to know what they are putting into themselves, and should have the freedom to choose to use harmful things as well. Keeping heroin illegal does a few things:
1. Makes heroin more dangerous to use because you are unsure of the quality/additives
2. Keeps heroin addicts addicted, because they can't get treatment very easily
3. Spreads disease through dirty needle use, because needle exchange programs are rare
4. Fucks other countries over by making their income source based on the drugs they sell us
5. Fucks us over by making us spend ass loads of money instead of collecting taxes and adding an industry in the US.
This is the same for all drugs. When we try to limit the freedom of consenting, intelligent adults, all we are doing is fucking ourselves over. I think all drugs should be legal and regulated by the government, and this stupid fucking drug war should end.

Monday, March 21, 2011

So, I guess everyone on the interwebz now has a blog, so i guess that means I should have one too. It's funny, the internet makes everyone anonymous, but it seems like that makes everyone craze attention even more. Being anonymous has made everyone want facebooks, myspaces, tumblr's, twitters, and blogs. So, once their entire life is easy to see by clicking on a few pages, they add anyone and everyone who has ever taken the time to see them eating at a different table at a restaurant once. It's retarded how many "friends" people have on facebook and such sites, when in reality they probably know like 20 of them really well. tops. Besides making everyone attention whores (me included, obviously), it has made everyone need vastly bigger and better and more grotesque, shocking, etc things to get their attention. I remember when "shocking" was tubgirl... *shudder*... then rotten.com, then nothing. I know i sound old, but its true, the shit people post today, and dont even blink an eye at, its amazing. I mean, go on any forum that allows adult content, and you'll see the depraved shithole the internet has started to become in order to receive the attention people so crave. But hey, im no better, im posting a fucking blog, ranting and raving like my thoughts actually mean something. Anyways, in a sea of anonymous it is interesting to see how people fight for an identity, while at the same time reveling in the mask that being anonymous allows them to have.